The experts are trying to make the mortgage situation in Australia sound all optimistic – they think interest rates won’t rise too much and they suggest that plenty of Australians are still able to cope well with an existing mortgage or to enter the home loan market for the first time. But just because Australia may not have been as badly affected by the global financial crisis as many other countries, that doesn’t mean that mortgages are easy for everyone, as news this week makes absolutely clear. Continue Reading »

This week the mortgage news in Australia varies from banks trying not to raise interest rates, to new laws coming in to stop some of the excessive fees we can pay, and on to a mortgage belonging to the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott! In more detail: Continue Reading »

There are lots of interesting tidbits in Australian mortgage news this week, so without further ado: Continue Reading »

Surveys are showing that as individuals, mortgage holders like me are more pessimistic than the experts about how many interest rate rises we are going to have to pay out for in the next year or so. I guess those of us who are the ones who’ll have to dig deeper in our pockets are more likely to be concerned about this, and it translates into statistics stating that consumers believe there will be at least three rises in interest rates in the next twelve months. Continue Reading »

There are two big items in the mortgage news this week: for those of us already in the mortgage market, I’m looking at whether or not we can afford to pay higher interest rates, and if you’re someone who’s waiting to buy their first property and are trying to get a mortgage, there’s news about more home loan applications getting knocked back. Continue Reading »

Phew. We’ve survived another start of the month Reserve Bank meeting without having to reach into our pockets and hand over more hard earned cash to the bank in the form of higher interest payments. The Reserve Bank met on Tuesday and decided, as many experts had tipped they would, to keep the cash rate at the same level for this month, and possibly another two or three months. And that’s good news for anyone with a mortgage or those of you looking to jump into a home loan in the near future. Continue Reading »